Originally published August 2021.
With the population moving to the US’s South and West, investment opportunities have followed.
Nearing my retirement, I am considering some of the investment lessons I have learned along the way. One of the most significant is the importance of demographic trends to the long-term performance of real estate markets, sub-markets and ultimately the assets themselves. In the 1980s, when institutional real estate investment was less broadly accepted, institutions focused on getting exposure to real estate through Class A office buildings in ‘gateway’ US cities and major shopping malls throughout the country. Investment in industrial and residential apartments was much less common, and deviating from the top five or six well-established markets was also met with some scepticism and questions about liquidity.